Analysis of U.S. Pacific Command Area of Operations Military Medical Transportations of Adult Patients, 2008 to 2018

Alec J Pawlukiewicz, Rachel E Bridwell, Brandon M Carius, Steven G Schauer, Joseph K Maddry, William T Davis

Mil Med. 2020 Nov 21;usaa289. doi: 10.1093/milmed/usaa289. Online ahead of print.

Introduction: With more than 370,000 military and civilian personnel stationed across Pacific Command (PACOM), medical evacuation in this largest command presents unique challenges. The authors describe medical evacuations analyzed from the U.S. Air Force Transportation Command Regulating and Command & Control Evacuation System (TRAC2ES) in PACOM.

Materials and methods: We performed a retrospective review of all TRAC2ES medical records for medical evacuations of adult patients from the PACOM theater of operations conducted between January 1, 2008 and December 31, 2018. We abstracted free text data entry in TRAC2ES to characterize the diagnoses requiring patient movement. Data are presented using descriptive statistics.

Results: During this 11-year period, 3,328 PACOM TRAC2ES encounters met inclusion criteria. Of these evacuations, 65.8% were male and were comprised mostly of active duty military (1,600, 48.1%) and U.S. civilians (1,706, 51.3%). Most transports originated in Japan (1,210 transports, 36.4%) or Guam (924 transports, 27.8%) with Hawaii (1,278 transports, 38.4%) as the most frequent destination. The majority of evacuations were routine (72.5%) with only 4.9% urgent evacuations. Medical conditions (2,905 transports, 87%) accounted for the largest proportion of transports, surpassing injuries (442 transports, 13%). The most common reasons for medical transports were behavioral health (671 transports, 20.2%) and cardiovascular disease (505 transports, 15.1%).

Conclusions: The majority of medical evacuations in PACOM were because of medical illness with routine precedence category, mirroring the largely noncombat operations occurring across this large area.